Sharing AR Examples

Week 1 submissions will be posted here for other learners to review.

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Andrea Hallett - Submitted March 13, 2012

"Marvel Augmented Reality App" - while presumably not intended specifically for education, Andrea makes a compelling case for how it can be used in an educational AR setting.

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Kathy Snow - March 19, 2012

Augmented reality Chemistry tool by Sponholtz

How it works: any computer with a webcam, printer and the programmed QCR codes. You need to link to the site where the software is held in order to interpret the code. The good the bad and the future: Chemistry was a difficult subject for me to learn because of its abstract nature, I don't think I am alone in that as I observe my students also having difficulty with the same issues that I had. It is difficult to comprehend chemical structures and the interactions of different molecules, so we build models. This is a time consuming process that inevitably leads to lost pieces.

I see the benefit of the Sponholz software being a gain in time and reduced cost to replacing model kits, and simply the time it takes to build the models. That said, I think that AR needs to come along more before I would use it to replace my beloved model kit. There is a wonderful aesthetic to building the models that is not captured by holding a card in front of the screen, and this software, although I glimpsed more improved offerings elsewhere, does not really capture the complexity of the bond interactions well. I can see this being a real boon in the future, with the opportunity to mix molecules and watch them react in front of your eyes, so you can see the power of the bonds and the impact of the shape of the molecule. I reviewed another product that did this, but rather gave students a running total of the number of bonds as you moved from one part of the molecule to the next, which I did find interesting but again,, just not quite there yet. My other critic, is that the cards are not like the reality. OK, the models too are only models of a theoretical reality, but the cards are flat and are basically QCR codes, which is not representative of the thing it represents. When examining visual literacy for example, an interesting perspective presented by Hayes & Whitebread (2006) outlines the importance of exposure to items for children (i.e. a paintbrush) before using the icon of a paintbrush on a computer screen and that children are better able to understand and use icons based on their similarity to the real item they have experienced. In the case of chemistry models, students are unlikely to be able to experience models on a microscopic level, but the flat QCR codes in my mind would lead to a flat visualisation of the item despite what is demonstrated on the screen. But I have no evidence of this causality just a "gut feeling".

Hayes, M. & Whitebread, D. (2008) ICT in the Early Years Open University Press: London

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Murray Garland - Submitted March 26, 2012

" Sky Siege by Simbiotics iPhone App" - Murray takes a look at the in-flight and seated versions of this helicopter flight simulator app.

Silka - Week 1 Task Submission, March 29, 2012

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